The Silence of the Girls Readers' Guide

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Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019 Reading Group Guide Also by Pat Barker: The Eye in the Door Union Street (1982) (1993) The Silence of the Girls Blow Your House Down The Ghost Road (1995) (1984) Another World (1998) by Pat Barker The Century’s Daughter Border Crossing (2001) (1986) Double Vision (2003) Hamish Hamilton The Man Who Wasn’t Life Class (2007) There (1988) Toby’s Room (2012) Regeneration (1991) Noonday (2015) About the book There was a woman at the heart of the Trojan war whose voice has been silent – till now. Briseis was a queen until her city was destroyed. Now she is slave to Achilles, the man who butchered her husband and brothers. Trapped in a world defined by men, can she survive to become the author of her own story? Discover the greatest Greek myth of all – retold by the witness history forgot. About the author Pat Barker was born in Yorkshire and began her literary career in her forties, when she took a short writing course taught by Angela Carter. Encouraged by Carter to continue writing and exploring the lives of working class women, she sent her fiction out to publishers. Thirty-five years later, she has published fifteen novels, including her masterfulRegeneration Trilogy, been made a CBE for services to literature, and won awards including the Guardian Fiction Prize and the UK’s highest literary honour, the Booker Prize. She lives in Durham and her latest novel is The Silence of the Girls. womensprizeforfiction.co.uk readinggroups.org read – The Reading Agency Ltd • Registered number: 3904882 (England & Wales) Questions and discussion points 1. Achilles is usually seen as a hero, but from the beginning of the book this image is challenged. What kind of person is he presented as and does he have any heroic qualities? 2. Briseis is barely mentioned in Homer’s Iliad. Why do you think Barker chose to write this story from her perspective? Do you think it’s important for well-known stories to be told from different viewpoints? 3. What do you think of the way the gods are incorporated into the story? 4. What does the book have to say about how women and their bodies are used during wartime? Suggested reading The Iliad by Homer For the Most Beautiful by Emily Hauser The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes House of Names by Colm Tóibín The Memoirs of Helen of Troy by Amanda Elyot Useful links The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker review – a feminist Iliad The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker: a stunning new novel The Silence of Classical Literature’s Women The War on Women: Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls womensprizeforfiction.co.uk readinggroups.org read – The Reading Agency Ltd • Registered number: 3904882 (England & Wales).

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Double Vision, 320 Pages
Double Vision, 320 pages DOWNLOAD http://bit.ly/1VSpSar http://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=Double+Vision Double Vision is Pat Barker's thought-provoking Booker Prize-winning novel of modern warfare. Provocative, intense and deeply moving, Double Vision is a powerful story of one man's quest to find redemption amidst the horror of twenty-first-century war. Returning to Afghanistan after his photographer friend is killed by a sniper, war reporter Stephen Sharkey seeks release from his nightmares in an England seemingly at peace with itself. Questioning man's inhumanity to man both abroad and at home, and whether love really can be the great redeemer, Double Vision is a searing novel of conflict in modern times. 'Full of brooding tension. Barker is one of our most significant contemporary novelists' Daily Telegraph 'Barker writes superbly. The reader is drawn on, from page to page' Economist 'Barker has a quite extraordinary ability to combine complexity and clarity and to make both seem parts of the same whole' Sunday Times 'The characters grab hold at the beginning and never loosen their grip. Barker holds us by the sheer beauty of her writing' Financial Times Pat Barker was born in 1943. Her books include the highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy, comprising Regeneration, which has been filmed, The Eye in the Door, which won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and The Ghost Road, which won the Booker Prize. The trilogy featured the Observer's 2012 list of the ten best historical novels. She is also the author of the more recent novels Another World, Border Crossing, Double Vision, Life Class, and Toby's Room.
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Regeneration Study Guide
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Reading Group Gold Border Crossing A Novel by Pat Barker About this Guide The following author biography and list of questions about Border Crossing are intended as resources to aid individual readers and book groups who would like to learn more about the author and this book. We hope that this guide will provide you a starting place for discussion, and suggest a variety of perspectives from which you might approach Border Crossing. ISBN: 978-0-374-70604-3 | 2007 About the Book As this dark, fast, and chilling novel begins, Tom Seymour, a clinical psychiatrist specializing in violent children, rescues a young man who has fallen into the river near Tom’s home in northern England. The young man turns out to be Danny Miller, whom Tom met in a professional capacity thirteen years earlier, when Danny was only ten. In fact, Tom had testified at Danny’s murder trial—and it was his expert opinion that effectively put Danny behind bars. Now Danny is back in Tom’s life, but this reunion really a coinci- dence? And was Tom correct in affirming, all those years ago, that Danny knew right from wrong, knew the implications of his actions, and knew he was committing murder? And what exactly does Danny want from Tom, now that Tom has agreed to help him sort out his troubled past? Border Crossing is a disturbing yet subtle psychological thriller that explores the nature of evil, the possibility of redemption, and the often overlapping problems of truth and identity. Praise “A sparse, headstrong writer whose style is bulletproof modern…[Border Crossing is] chilling and psych- logically persuasive… [Barker’s] unadorned prose delivers a punch when you’re not looking…as frighten- ing as it wise.”—Gail Caldwell, Boston Sunday Globe “Barker creates a sense of menace worthy of Ian McEwan…Border Crossing is replete with sharp, ex- pressive exchanges, hard poetry, and as many enigmas as implacable truths.”— Kerry Fried, The Atlantic Monthly “Barker can tell a story with the verve of a seasoned mystery writer.
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OMC | Data Export
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